NATCA Participates in FAA Labor-Management Forum
Wednesday, November 10, 2010

On November 2nd and 3rd, the first meeting of the FAA’s National Labor-Management Forum took place in Baltimore. The meeting was an opportunity for roughly 30 representatives from FAA’s labor unions, including NATCA, and management to come together and discuss how the National Labor-Management Forum can work to improve the agency for all of its employees.

President Obama signed an executive order last December creating Labor-Management Forums as a tool to improve labor relations within the federal government. The FAA labor-management participants first came together in June and jointly decided to create a national forum. The group made clear that they were committed to working together to build a collaborative working relationship and the FAA National Labor-Management Forum would be a strong complement to efforts already underway throughout the agency.

Last week, the forum participants agreed to a charter that outlines its responsibilities, procedures and guiding principles. Participants also set up work groups to take on issues involving metrics, pre-decisional involvement, joint collaboration training and communication.

In addition to the charter, the FAA National Labor-Management Forum also discussed some of the details of its purpose which broadly is to improve labor-management relations. Forum members agreed that the body will:

  • Handle high level agency-wide issues.  It will not be a place to resolve local or facility level issues.

  • Set a tone for the agency that will help facilitate a broad culture change and encourage collaboration efforts.  The forum will not set prescriptive guidelines for these collaboration efforts.

  •  Enable and support continuing collaborative efforts and those that have yet to get underway
     
  • Commit to provide tools for collaboration and dispute resolution

  • Relect positive interaction.


The Forum is scheduled to meet quarterly.  The next meeting is slated to take place in February.

 

Below is a note from FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt:

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Dear Colleagues,

Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the first meeting of FAA’s National Labor-Management Forum in Baltimore.  We made terrific progress in laying the foundation for the work the forum will take on in the coming months.  We are making great strides in changing the culture here at the FAA to one that revolves around collaboration and open and honest communication.  One of my main priorities as your Administrator is to make the FAA one of the top places to work in the federal government.  Our National Labor-Management Forum is one of the tools that will help make that happen.

I invite you to read the report out from last week’s meeting as well as the charter we adopted as a group with open discussion and accepted by consensus.  It is also posted in FOCUS FAA.

Thank you for all of the hard work each and every one of you is doing to bring about the kind of progress we’re seeing. 

Thanks,

Randy